


i'm an expert, i'm the one

by milfbyers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Joyce Byers has OCD, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milfbyers/pseuds/milfbyers
Summary: joyce byers has ocd. and this is how she manages. which, to no one's surprise, isn't the best.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	i'm an expert, i'm the one

**Author's Note:**

> i imagine if joyce didn't know about ptsd, she knew absolutely nothing about ocd but here's my take on if she were to develop this illness after the events that happened to her over the past three years of canon.

everything was in groups of three for joyce byers. three plates on the dinner table on good weeks, three baskets of laundry to fold and put away, three beds made every morning and three spots taken on the couch on movie night. for years, it had been just her and her boys. the number three had comforted her. she knew no matter what happened, it was the three of them against the monsters standing on her front porch. so, it was no surprise when the number three found its way into her routines. or when her intrusive thoughts centered around the safety of will and jonathan. 

joyce didn’t realize she had a problem until the problem became too big to fit on her plate. now her obsessive thoughts and compulsive routines seemed to be standing next to her instead of in a small heap she could brush aside. it grew in size rapidly as it whispered in her ear. when everything else was screaming, it was what she heard the loudest. she heard it when she finished talking to someone on the phone or when she left a room. a sad repetition of ‘will is going to be taken again... unless the phone is hung up six times’ or ‘jonathan will leave and won’t come home because of you... unless you flip the light switch three more times’ cycled through her mind until she completed the task to the satisfaction of the voice lingering in her head. 

she ached for control. joyce longed for control over anything that couldn’t turn the dynamic and make her the powerless one again. her compulsions and obsessive thoughts gave her that sense of authority. not a healthy one but joyce wasn’t used to having anything be healthy. her marriage wasn’t healthy, her relationship with her dinner plate wasn’t healthy and her relationship with herself wasn’t healthy. joyce and her compulsions were standing side by side and at eye level instead of someone towering over her. 

when the routines were completed and the phone sat on the hook or the light switch was flipped off in groups of three, she felt like she was the one in charge. joyce had the power she desperately grasped at after losing her son and then having no answers for him when he was suffering. the power she craved after watching bob and hopper die in front of her when she felt she could’ve done something to stop it. she felt she had more direction over her life than she had in years.

the intrusive thoughts were the ones that took the most to turn off. the others joyce had been used to. she wasn’t afraid of self hatred, it had become her friend over the years. it accompanied her through the worst and through the best. it was the loudest when she looked in the mirror and the quietest when she looked at her sons. if she was proud of anything she had done, joyce was proud of how she raised her boys. but the thoughts that came with her compulsions, she was not used to. the fear of the repeating threats weren’t as easy to push away. these were new to her. 

joyce had no name for the thoughts that plagued her with dread if she didn’t complete a routine correctly. she had no name for the voice in her head. she couldn’t tell other people about the fear of her boys being taken from her again if she didn’t complete a task correctly. if she allowed herself a moment of vulnerability where she simply thought about telling hopper or telling jonathan, joyce was flushed with embarrassment. 

with her cheeks stained with shame, she would shake her head at herself and mumble the word ‘crazy’ under her breath. ‘crazy’ felt less like a cheap insult and more like a comfortable truth. maybe she was crazy but she followed through with the actions regardless. she needed to keep her family of three safe in the only way she could control.

once, early on a tuesday morning in the quiet hour between the time the boys left for school and when she left for work, joyce forgot to make sure the switch was off in the third group, instead she had only done two. before she could stop herself, she was crying. her nails were digging into the skin on her arms, long angry stretches of aggravated lines formed down her arms and across her stomach when she reached under her shirt. joyce’s knees buckled. she fell onto the kitchen floor in defeat. screams rose up her throat but she let them out in heavy, deep sobs. she started to count. slow breaths in and out as she wiped her eyes. 

this was the true relationship she had with her compulsions. joyce didn’t have the words to understand the true dynamic of this situation. she was not the one in power, she was not the director.

instead, she was the puppet on the string.

**Author's Note:**

> i can have a little projection.. as a treat.  
> on a more serious note, this is for anyone who has listened to me talk about my ocd and didn't make me feel crazy. it's appreciated more than you know. 
> 
> milfbyers on twitter


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